page_title: Death marches (Holocaust)
section_title: Auschwitz to Loslau
hierarchical_section_title: Death marches (Holocaust) / End of the war / Auschwitz to Loslau
caption_attribution_description: English: Memorial in Krailling for a death march from KZ Dachau. Artist: Hubertus von Pilgrim Deutsch: Gedenkstein in Krailling für einen Todesmarsch vom KZ Dachau aus. Bildhauer: Hubertus von Pilgrim
context_page_description: Death marches refer to the forcible movement of prisoners by Nazi Germany toward the end of World War II and the Holocaust. The marches took place mostly between the summer/autumn of 1944 and May 1945, when hundreds of thousands of prisoners, mostly Jews, from German concentration camps near the eastern front were moved to camps inside Germany away from Allied forces. The purpose of the marches was to allow the Germans to use the prisoners as slave labour, to remove evidence of crimes against humanity, and to retain control of the prisoners in case they could be used to bargain with the Allies.
  Already sick after months or years of violence and starvation, prisoners were marched for tens of miles in the snow to train stations; transported for days at a time without food or shelter in open freight trains; then forced to march again at the other end to the new camp. Those who lagged behind or fell were shot. The largest death march took place in January 1945. Nine days before the Soviet Red Army arrived at the Auschwitz concentration camp, the Germans marched 56,000 prisoners out of the camp toward Wodzislaw, 35 miles away, where they were put on freight trains to other camps.
context_section_description: The largest and the most notorious of the death marches took place in mid-January 1945. On January 12, the Soviet army began its Vistula-Oder Offensive, advancing on occupied Poland and reaching near enough such that artillery fire could be heard from the camps. By January 17, orders were given to vacate the Auschwitz concentration camp and its subcamps. Between the 17th and 21st, the SS began marching approximately 56,000 prisoners out of the Auschwitz camps, most of them 63 km (39 mi) west to the train depot at Wodzisław Śląski (Loslau), while others marched 55 km (34 mi) northwest to Gliwice (Gleiwitz), with some being marched to other locations. Temperatures of −20 °C (−4 °F) and lower were recorded at the time of these marches. Some residents of Upper Silesia tried to help the marching prisoners. Some of the prisoners themselves managed to escape the death marches to freedom. At least 3,000 prisoners died on the Gleiwitz route alone. Approximately 9,000-15,000 prisoners in total died on death marches out of Auschwitz's camps, and those who did survive were then put on freight trains and shipped to other camps deeper in German held territory.
caption: Memorial in Krailling for the death march from Dachau
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